Tommy Boy
by gibbsheroic27
Summary: Jed Bartlet has always been Sam's hero, ever since he was a little boy. Warning: Descriptions of child abuse and kidnapping.
1. Chapter 1-Holding Out For A Hero

A/N: I own nothing. This fic is based off the premise that Sam is the Bartlets missing son, kidnapped as a small child. This is the story of how he finds his way back home. This premise is borrowed, with the authors permission, from Long Lost Son by Collegegirl2805, which is awesome and you should all go read right now. AU, will probably ignore some timeline elements for obvious reasons. Minor note, I'm pretty new to West Wing fandom, so I apologize in advance for any continuity errors or characterization mistakes. No Beta, all mistakes are mine.

Warning: This chapter contains descriptions of/references to child abuse, alcoholism, and kidnapping.

Chapter 1-Holding Out For A Hero

Ever since he could remember, Sam Seaborn had wanted different parents.

It wasn't that his were a bad sort, per se. They fed him, put a roof over his head and clothes on his back, sent him to the best schools and put him in all the right sports. His mother was on the PTA, his father the school council.

In fact, Sam can never remember a time when he wasn't told how lucky he was, to have such perfect parents.

Nobody ever told his parents how lucky they were to have the perfect son.

Trouble is, Sam's never quite sure why. He learns to read before kindergarten, all on his own. He takes his first book to Mummy proudly, a big smile splitting his dimpled face. He stumbles back in surprise when Mummy throws something wet and cold and red at him, something sticky and slightly sweet tasting, something not quite like fruit juice.

He goes to sleep that night with an aching head, sticky hair, and a confused feeling in his little chest, because he could have sworn that Mummy should have been happy.

He learns to tie his shows the morning of his fifth birthday, running faster than he should to tell Daddy, who is home all day just to celebrate with him. Grandma said so.

He falls in the hallway, slipping awkwardly over his half-tied other shoe 'cause the knots don't quite stick yet. Daddy finds him crying over his throbbing toe. That's how he learns that boys don't cry.

SBSB

When Sam is seven, he sits quietly on the living room floor after dinner, diligently filling out his homework, studiously ignoring the television blaring scant inches from his face.

His father swears abruptly at the set, hardly an unusual occurrence, particularly when he's watching anything about politics, so Sam pays little mind. "Bloody sissy bastards, ruining this country for good honest folk!" "Now, now Gerald dear, don't get so worked up so."

His parents have this conversation practically every night. Grumbling about politics is his father's favourite after dinner over drinks hobby, particularly when there are left wing supporters to throw stones at. "Good honest folk" is pretty much Gerald's favourite catch phrase for himself and the rest of his drinking after golf on Sundays set. It will be years before Sam is able to fully appreciate the irony of that label.

His parents sent him to a private school for the prestige, but it has the advantage of a rather good library, which aids Sam's somewhat clumsy attempts to find out what a democrat is. Dodging bullies hardly makes his research any easier, because skipping grades to please his parents does little to endear him to his peers, and Sam is nearly a decade off learning to own the beautiful baby blues his Grandma said he got from her late husband. Who Sam has never seen a picture of, oddly enough, but Grandma makes the best cookies and always has a hug for him after Sunday dinner, so he's more than happy to take her word for it.

Learning how to use an encyclopedia turns out to be a rather fortuitous investment from his kindergarten education, because knowing what a democrat was, and what a republican was, made Sam just curious enough to risk glancing through his eyelashes at the TV the next night at dinner.

And that's how he first sees him. Hands gesticulating wildly, hair falling in his face, barely seeming to come much past the podium's top but somehow filling the whole space around him, speaking words even Sam's rather precocious seven year old vocabulary can't quite comprehend.

His father's slightly louder than usual grumbling is the clearest indication he gets that this man is somehow something his father disapproves of. Which can only mean one thing. He's a democrat.

Sam thinks he's the coolest guy he's ever seen.

"Boy, stop gapping and get on with your homework!" Sam rips his eyes obediently from the screen, ducking as low as he can to the table top and still steal a last rebellious glance at the board of education member being interviewed on the screen.

His small eyes eagerly eat up the words scrolling across the bottom, memorizing the odd letters, "Josiah Bartlet". He steals one more second, even as his father's "Samuel" steals the air from the room. Pale blue eyes meet his own through the TV screen, and for one instant, Sam could swear their eyes met.

SBSB

Sam does a paper on newly appointed House Representative Josiah Bartlet in the fifth grade. He is eight years old, and proudly announces to his father that he's now a democrat.

And that's how Sam gets his first black eye.

SBSB

Sam has had night terrors for as long as he can remember. And for just as long, his father has gotten mad at him for them. It's an outrage that only increases as Sam gets older, directly in line with the severity of the dreams. It's a long time before he sees any connection.

Sam never really remembers the dreams, although sometimes he wakes up with a word caught on the tip of his tongue, never quite there enough to recall what it was. He always remembers feeling a sense of loss when he wakes up. It never quite fades, even in the cool light of day.

Sam has his last night terror on his sixteenth birthday, the day before he leaves for Princeton. It's the first and only time that he realizes the word he's been trying to recall for over a decade was Dad.

He's too confused by this to give it too much thought at the time.

SBSB

Grandma sends Sam to Dungeons and Dragons Camp the summer he turns ten. It's a special treat for finishing middle school early, and Sam has looked forward to it for months. His father was adamant Sam wasn't going, right up until the week before camp started, the week when Grandma taught Sam how to use his baby blues to good advantage.

He suspects Grandma had a lot more to do with his father's change of heart than Sam himself did. He's always liked her far more than he's ever liked Sam, blue eyes and all.

Grandma dies while Sam is at camp, and he comes home to an empty refrigerator and an equally full mini-fridge.

Sam spends three weeks in the hospital contemplating how much of a disappointment he is to his father.

He never plays Dungeons and Dragons again.

SBSB

Sam tries harder, does well in school, gets straight A's, brings home glowing report cards, skips another grade in high school. He's on the track team, the soccer team, the chess team, and the debate team. He makes class president two years running. He graduates three years early.

He doesn't show his parents his acceptance letter to Princeton. He's not even sure if they notice when he leaves.

SBSB

Sam votes for the first time three days after his twenty-first birthday. He proudly proclaims himself a Democrat for all the world to see.

The flimsy badge pin pierces his skin slightly, sharp and stinging. It feels refreshingly different than the pain of a bruise.

SBSB

Sam keeps a rumbled newspaper clipping inside his pillowcase every day from his eighth birthday to his sixteenth. Every night, before he turns out the light, he carefully takes out the picture and smooths the crinkled edges.

He pins it to his dorm wall at Princeton, right above his bed. Every night before he goes to sleep, he runs his hand over the worn image, and whispers the words he's been saying like a prayer every night for nearly ten years.

"I wish you were my Dad."

And for all that the picture was once black and white, faded now to a crinkly monotone yellow with age and care, Sam could still swear the eyes that regarded him with a warm sternness were as blue as his own.


	2. 2 Call to Arms

Sam passes the Bar three days before his twenty-first birthday, on a blustery march day, winds gusting strong enough to rattle the rickety windows in their frames so often he always finds it a minor miracle he passed at all.

He almost missed the whole thing. Not by accident either.

It has been nearly six years since he spoke to his parents. Not because there was a disagreement. Sam may have moved out at fifteen, but he was never emancipated. This fact will one day give Josh heart attacks-more because he only finds out when he's working to get Sam elected to the Oval Office, and not because he is the man's best friend-but there really is no way to slice the first three years of Sam's academic career without running into the inescapable fact that he was essentially living completely on his own from the age of fifteen(edit).

No, it wasn't that they had an argument. They didn't kick him out either. It was more that Sam left, and his parents confirmed his fears that they never cared enough to come after him by failing to call him for the next five and three-quarter years. Honestly, Sam will later wonder a lot about why they bothered to steal him in the first place, when he was such a clear disappointment.

All of which goes a way to explaining why when the phone rings the morning he is scheduled to sit the Bar exam and Sam picks it up to hear the gruff voice of Gerald Seaborn on the other end of the line, he promptly drops the phone hard enough to crack the plastic.

Staring at it like it might turn into a snake and bite him, Sam seriously considers simply leaving the thing there, squawking "Samuel?" like a demented parrot. He has a rather important test to get to after all.

To Sam's shame, but not to anyone's surprise, he picks it back up anyway. He blows out a steadying breath, and tries for neutral, "Hello Dad."

"Samuel, that is no way to address your father." Yeah, there went neutral.

It takes nearly twenty minutes for Sam to figure out the purpose of his father's call: What kind of law firm his father expects him to enter after he passes the Bar.

Sam briefly considers whether he should take this presumption as a backhanded complement. He glances at the clock, pales, and mentally writes the entire though away as wishful thinking.

He considers hanging up. Instead, he says "Yes Father" in all the right places, patiently waits for his father to finally ring off with a ground out, "I'll do that Sir," and runs for it.

Sam is three minutes late for the Bar. He gets in on a fluke, one of his professor's taking in his flustered appearance and glassy eyes and taking pity on him. He doesn't remember a single minute of the test, his father's voice refusing to leave his skull the entire time.

Somehow, he gets the top score of the entire cohort.

That same Professor, who turns out to be an old friend of future President Bartlett, will one day tell the entire odd tale to the Barletts over cocktails, Sam wondering at the bizarre coincidences of his life with every bitter sip of orange-tinted vermouth.

The President side eyes Sam for the entire story, pausing until Abbey has skillfully steered the Professor off to avoid a cricket-chirping silence following the chuckling end of the story, "And that's how your deputy-chief of staff here almost missed the Bar exam!"

Seriously, he knows he and Josh both have vaguely the same colour hair, if its dark and raining, but really? He'd taken the highest score of anyone that guy ever taught. Honestly, Toby had checked!

Jed still seems more interested in Sam's face than the story. "Want to fill in the blanks for the rest of the class Samuel?" Or maybe not.

Sam focuses on those eyes, so blue and gentle he sometimes feels he could happily drown in them. Across the dancefloor, Abbey is introducing his professor to Lionel Tribbey, who appears to have actually somehow gotten his cricket bat passed security again.

Sam feels something in his chest swell. He looks back at those oceans of blue, and lets the words just sort of slip out. "Gerald called me that morning. First time I'd heard from him in over half a decade. And, well, let's just say he didn't call to discuss the weather."

Jed's face takes on an interesting shade of puce, and Sam begins looking around frantically for Abbey, praying his unexpected attempt at more transparency in this whole newly found family thing didn't just kill his newly found dad.

It isn't until much later that it occurs to Sam that when he said all that, he didn't even think of calling Gerald his father.

00

It was a frustrating meeting at the end of a more frustrating week, and Sam is honestly considering letting them all go happily drown in that inevitable oil slick they're all so busy denying will one day soon be a definite thing.

Plus his boss is beginning to remind him unerringly of his father, despite looking absolutely nothing like him. Not listening to Sam seemed to be a trait they had in common.

Sam is considering asking the man whether he hated democrats and liked roast duck because honestly, he and dear old dad should get together and have a barbecue sometime when someone taps obnoxiously on the glass behind his boss' head.

Sam never walked out on his father, not once. Not while the man was in the same room anyway.

Somehow, following Josh out that door is the easiest thing he's ever done in a long time. It feels oddly liberating all the same.

Because Sam has never had the courage to say no to his father in his life. Not about a single thing. Still hasn't really. But he thinks maybe his boss is a good start.

00

It was a ridiculous way to meet someone. To meet anyone. Sam always blames the peanut butter. Or Josh.

Really though, he should probably be blaming the flight to the other end of the country, the raging rants masquerading as messages his newly former fiancé has been leaving for him by the machine memory load, and the sheer demonic nature of his new boss.

Whose name is escaping him nearly as much as the blasted jar of peanut butter's lid keeps stubbornly sticking. Sam growls under his breath, muttering a cut off curse.

It's three in the morning, he hasn't eaten in eighteen hours because Josh is a great planner in many areas but practicality rarely enters into those plans, and he is relatively sure his ex just committed tax fraud by running off with the entire contents of his bank account.

And the damned jar of peanut butter won't open. Sam isn't sure how this situation could get any worse. Although that may just be the exhaustion talking.

Sam is contemplating bashing the jar against the stove, glass shards in food be damned, when soft footfalls finally alert him to another presence in the darkened kitchen.

Sam only thought to flip the stove light on when he came in, but as this is an industrial strength kitchen, literally, the light is powerful enough to cast a stark, clinical glow over the entire room. And emerging from that glow, mussed hair and blue eyes and Notre Dame sweatshirt. Even without the oddly halo like quality cast on the man by the stove light, Sam Seaborn would recognize Josiah Bartlett anywhere. Although the halo didn't hurt.

The incumbent Governor of New Hampshire stops a few feet shy of Sam and his pool of light and regards the peanut butter jar on the counter with an almost predatory air.

"Do you by any chance need a hand with that son?" Sam will later remember that as an oddly appropriate thing for the man to have said the first time they laid eyes on each other.

At the time, he simply flushes deep red and silently curses Josh. Apparently he was wrong. This situation could get a whole lot worse.

Sam blames the exhaustion for what he says next. "No, thank you Governor." So far so good, "Although I'm also looking for apples, if you might have happened to spot any?" Internally, Sam groans. Did he seriously just ask a State Governor, ask Josiah Barlett himself, to help him find a piece of fruit?

For just a moment, something flickers in his companion's gaze, something Sam is too tired to identify before it is almost instantly replaced by a look of gentle amusement that Sam will eventually come to love. Now, it just makes him feel confused.

"Apples and peanut butter huh? My family all think that's a disgusting combination." And there's that look again. Sam feels he is missing something.

Normal manual dexterity, possibly, if the enviable ease with which the Governor has just liberated the peanut butter from both Sam's hand and its lid. He then proceeds to dip a finger into the open jar, bringing it up to his mouth and honest to goodness sucking on it.

Sam is starting to wonder if he's actually asleep. The sweatshirt wearing, peanut butter licking hero of his childhood chooses that moment to turn his intense blue eyes back to Sam.

"I'm sorry, it's been a long day so hopefully you'll forgive me-" There was an awkward pause. "What's your name again?" Sam suddenly wishes he truly was asleep.

He manages to squeak out a slightly not-awkward, "I'm Sam sir." Yeah, totally not awkward. Sure.

The Governor is looking amused again. And possibly slightly confused. And also strangely alert for this hour of the night. "Well I'm Sam, do _you_ like peanut butter and apples?"

Sam feels a helpless little grin spread across his face because honestly? "Yes sir, I love them together. Particularly with chocolate milk." That last was either too much information, or too odd a combination for the Governor's stomach at three AM, because his companion's face pales from amused to oddly hollow in the span of mere moments.

He backs towards the kitchen door with hurried steps, miraculously missing backing into anything on the way. "Well, Sam, you have a good night now." And just like that, Jed Bartlett is gone as quickly as he appeared. Sam feels his eyes prickle once again, and blinks them rapidly. The heat in his face doesn't exactly help.

It isn't until Sam is turning to leave the kitchen himself, empty-handed and appleless, and the finally notices. "He stole my peanut butter." In the stillness of that industrial kitchen at nearly gone 4 AM, Sam can't help but laugh at that.

And that's how he met the next President of the United States.

It was a ridiculous way to meet someone. The kind of absurd anecdote you wouldn't even tell at a cocktail party for fear of asphyxiating on your drink from sheer embarrassment.

It was a truly mortifying way to meet the future president of the united states.

Sam will one day look back on that moment and think that it was a ridiculous was to meet anyone.

But it was also, somehow, the perfect way to meet Jed Bartlett.

The perfect way to meet his father.

00

Leo McGarry is a giant in the Democratic party, a force behind the scenes that holds more power than most at the forefront of the action will ever know. Sam knows this long before he ever claps eyes on the man. His political acumen may not be up to Josh's level of devious manipulation, but he is far from a slouch.

Meeting the man is anticlimactic in a way, the knowledge that Leo hand-picked Josh and Josh then hand-picked Sam sitting easily in his stomach up till the moment when Leo calls him Josh.

Sam feels more insulted for Josh's sake than his own. Although really, do they actually look that similar?

Sam is in hesitant, breathless process of explaining why telling him to wrangle the big-wig investors and Josh to write the next copy for Toby's approval is a really had idea to an understandably but still insultingly distracted Leo McGarry when an intern with a fresh pot of coffee backs into a tall woman who he's pretty sure was just introduced to them all as C-something, who proceeds to tilt alarmingly, flail, and flounder smack into Sam.

The stumble breaks her fall beautifully, and sends Sam's head plowing straight into the nearest metal doorframe. Leo appears to be contemplating whether to catch Sam or laugh out loud when the floor rushes up to meet him a moment later.

Wonderful first impression he made there.

00

Sam comes to with a jolt, his head jerk restrained by a firm, practiced hand. There is the muted scent of perfume in the air, and the figure that slowly swims into focus appears to be wearing a functional but elegant mauve skirt-suit. Sam blinks again.

Yes, that is in fact the Governor's wife holding a wad of gauze to the wet, throbbing mass at his temple. A first aid kit is open beside them, supplies arranged with professional economy.

It is the first and only time Sam will ever think of Abigail Barlett as a politician's wife first, and a doctor second.

"Can you hear me? Don't try to get up. I need you to follow this for me, alright?" Sam lets his eyes follow the pen for a moment before attempting to rise once again. Dr. Bartlett is having none of this turn of events.

"And just where do you think you're going young man? You _will_ lie there quietly and wait for the paramedics." However, Sam is having none of it either. He doesn't need a mother-hen in his life, Josh is bad enough.

Nor does he need the future first-lady kneeling at his side, tending to his every scrape and bruise. Sam learned how to survive on his own a long time ago, thank you very much.

"Listen, Dr. Bartlett, thank you very much for your concern, and the excellent first-aid, but I have no double vision or nausea, I was unconscious for less than a minute, I have no memory gaps, my pupils are even and reactive, and I am completely cognizant and alert." Sam takes in her implacable expression, and recalculates.

"Also my new boss would rather hate it if I had to be carted off to the hospital for my own clumsiness on my first day. And frankly Ma'am, I would really like the chance to help your husband become the next President of the United States." He plasters on his best mega-watt smile, extra innocence and charm. For a moment, something infinitely sad and anguished crosses Dr. Bartlett's eyes. Sam doesn't even have a chance to furrow his brow before it's gone, replaced with an exaggerated eye-roll and an equally exasperated laugh.

She glances up at Leo McGarry, lurking in the office doorway. Josh must still be out, wrangling that Senator. "Well frankly, I don't know what you were worried about Leo. Josh here certainly has a hard-enough head. I'm sure he'll fit right in."

Sam appreciates the vote of confidence, but really? Again? Maybe he should give up and start wearing a name-tag.

The Governor interrupts their conversation before either of them get a chance to respond to that comment, announcing his presence by lobbing an apple at Sam's head.

He fumbles the catch somewhat, needs both hands, but he does catch it, before the other occupants of the room have finished turning to glare at their latest addition.

"Hey Sam, I found those apples we were looking for the other night." It's a casual toss of a comment, but apparently Sam won't be needing that nametag.

"Well, he looks fine to me, but I'm not the one with the shiny medical degree, so Sam, you're going to be a good little speech writer and do what the nice doctor tells you and go get checked out to make sure you're not going to start bleeding profusely all over my apples." None of that was phrased as a question.

Sam gazes at the faces surrounding him, ranging from implacable to stern, all with an undeniable component of concerned built into their expressions.

He groans out a quiet "Yes Sir" and stares morosely at his apple.

Frankly he thinks the name-tag idea would have been preferable.


	3. Chapter 3 History Lessons

Not much changes after the Mother-Hen Incident. Josh never actually calls it that in Dr. Bartlett's presence, but the very fact they are in Dr. Bartlet's presence enough after Sam is released from the hospital with a shiny bracelet proclaiming him a grade two concussion rather makes Josh's case for him.

Sam would spend more time finding the entire thing odd, except for two little facts. First, everyone still get him and Josh mixed up on a nearly hourly basis-heck, the Governor called him _CJ_ the other day-, and two, Sam actually happens to like Dr. Bartlet.

Sam doesn't have a very good model of what motherly should look like in his mind, never much thought about it either way where his own mother was concerned, was never really looking for it either. But there really is no other word to describe Abigail Bartlet.

Well, awesome and awe-inspiring and beautiful and badass and Amazonian all also come to mind, but Sam isn't either suicidal or brave enough to ever say any of those out loud.

Kind, gentle, and understanding also work. But all of that is a bit of a mouthful, so Sam just sticks with motherly.

He figures, with all his limited experience on the topic, that that is as good a bid for an adequate all encompassing descriptor as any.

He will one day laugh at the irony of this until he feels tears begin to drip down his aching face.

But the shoulder he finds waiting for him to cry into on that day will belong to none other than Dr. Agibail Bartlet… _his_ mother. So perhaps he was right all along.

00

The Governor's behaviour is harder to parse, after the Incident. Dr. Bartlet at least has the largely plausible excuse of professional concern, for all that she simply offered Toby an ice pack and an aspirin when he walked into a door the other week.

And it isn't as if the man is devoid of unusual habits. In fact, if Sam didn't know any better, he would suspect their candidate of having multiple personality disorder. That, or being possessed by aliens.

Sam is confident in calling himself one of the smartest people in most rooms, and even with his present company, he is sure of placing in at least the top six, but even he is at a loss to find enough words to adequately begin to explain the enigma that is Jed Bartlet. One minute affable, the next minute cold, from smug to sincere in a heartbeat, ruthless yet compassionate to a fault. Toby describes him as a human Rubik cube, and Sam would be happy to accept that explanation, if he wasn't mostly sure that this particular puzzle had no solvable solution.

"Hey Sam, how's it going?" Sam managed to drop both his donut and his notebook at the sound of the Governor's voice.

Consequently, it is through a spray of icing sugar that he just catches the flinch in the Governor's eyes when Sam meets his gaze.

"I just thought you might be hungry, what with Toby here keeping you up all hours rewriting that speech." While he is talking, Governor Bartlet produces a slightly cockeyed sandwich from…somewhere, brandishing it at Sam like a defensive weapon more than a thoughtful gesture.

The sandwich hits the desk with a hard plop.

"Well, I'd better be going." The words are barely out of the man's mouth before Sam's staring at empty space. He chances a glance at the sandwich. Lettuce and mustard on rye. His favourite.

Yep, Rubik cube doesn't even begin to describe it.

Sam regards the rapidly retreating back of the Governor of New Hampshire with a look of puzzle incredulity. He turns abruptly to Toby, who had spent the last several minutes either attempting to be completely oblivious to their unexpected visitor, or actually being completely oblivious to their unexpected visitor. "Is it just me, or does something about me seem to…unsettle the Bartlets," Sam paused for a moment, thoughtful, "and Leo?"

Toby looks up briefly from his latest attempt to break his clunky laptop through sheer finger pressure alone. "Maybe it's about that whole thing with their son." And apparently actually oblivious it was.

Toby throws the comment out in a moment of distraction, so he can perhaps be forgiven for calling kidnapping a "thing," but Sam is honestly too lost in thought to notice either way.

He's heard of Thomas J. Bartlett of course. How hasn't really. It was the most notorious kidnapping of the latter part of the twentieth-century, if these were the kinds of things that one should be ranking on a scale of most terrible wins the prize.

A two-year-old boy from an old, moneyed family, the child of devoted, beautiful parents, two adorable older sisters sobbing in front of the news cameras. Snatched from a daycare playground on the watch of negligent caregivers, not a trace of him ever found.

A national manhunt that took an improbable four months to lose steam, and a further decade to go completely cold. A resolute, passionate father who wore his love for his son like a sword of justice, compelled to try to change the world that stole his little boy from him, rather than burn it down. A stoical, fierce mother, holding her remaining children close, starting up charity after charity, event after event, reaching out, helping others long before that kind of thing was fashionable, inside politics or out.

A footnote in the history books, a juicy story that had sparked more lawsuits than publishing those nude pictures of the President's eldest when the man was first elected. A spectre that haunted every waking moment of the Bartlett's lives.

Yes, it was impossible to forget the story of little Tommy Bartlett.

But despite that, Sam wasn't really seeing the connection. "In what context?" Toby abandoned his laptop destruction with a disgusted huff, "Seriously Princeton, what sort of rock have you been living under to not have seen a picture of the Bartlets' son?"

Sam considers pointing out he was probably all of four years old when Tommy was stolen, but chose to refrain from giving Toby yet another reminder of his relative youth in favour of clarifying the point he was still rather lost on, "Ok, but what-" The rest of his sentence dies in his throat, as a memory unexpectedly floods to the fore of his brain.

 _"Useless goddamn democratic sonna-bitch, can't even protect his own son-"_

 _His father's slurred words, a news channel blaring in the background, a smashed school project and a bruise that took weeks to fade._

Sam swallowed hard, for all he was still years off truly comprehending the tragedy of that memory, and grimly turned back to his typing. What rock indeed.

00

It doesn't go away, any of it, the odd behaviours and haunted expressions, but Sam does his best to not really think about it much, those first few months of the campaign, even on the days when Leo joined Abbey in giving him slightly lingering looks, a double take across a table when he laughed at one of CJ's jokes, a paling complexion when he argued a point with Josh.

The Governor's eyes when he truly first met Sam, a brief handshake in a crowded storefront, Josh a sweaty and eager presence between them, a lingering expression of startled recognition morphing into a look of the deepest despair Sam had ever seen in anyone's eyes.

Yes somehow, despite all that, it still takes him nearly five months to finally come out and ask Leo what the heck the big deal is.

Well, more precisely, Toby asks about it on Sam's behalf, but Sam is the one who ends up standing behind a hibiscus plant with Leo McGarry, party legend, trying very hard to pretend that he isn't finding this whole thing just a little bit creepy, so he's willing to claim credit for the inquiry.

"What precisely is it you want to know Sam?" Sam feels Toby's, "What's the Bartlets' deal with Sam's face?" had been plenty precise enough, but perhaps Leo wanted to hear it in his own…slightly less blunt words.

Sam shifted awkwardly, receiving a leaf whack to the back of his head for his trouble. "Well…last week the Governor brought me a bushel of apples?"

Leo waited a beat. "Yeah, so?" Sam reminds himself that these men have been friends for thirty years or more. He's known Josh for less than a third of that, and that thing with cat slippers last Christmas hadn't even caused Sam to bat an eye, so okay, fair point.

"Well, it's very nice and everything, but-" Leo narrowed his eyes.

"You don't like apples?" Sam blinked, stream of thought cut off. "No, I love apples," and they had been very good with the five jars of Skippy's peanut butter he'd found at the bottom of the bushel _barrel,_ but somehow, Sam felt reluctant to share that detail. He wasn't at all sure why.

"And I'm very grateful, to the Governor," Sam hesitated, then continued in a rush, "It's just that most days he doesn't remember my name, and the apple thing was only mentioned months ago at like three in the morning, so-" Sam leaves the sentence hanging there, awkward and loud.

Leo tactfully doesn't ask what Sam was doing discussing food preferences with the future President of the United States of America in the middle of the night. He just happily plunges the conversation into a whole other direction of weird after staring at Sam for a long moment, eyes thoughtful. "How much do you know about Tommy Sam?" Sam stumbled slightly on the seeming non-sequitur.

"Um, are we speaking of the Governor and Dr. Bartlett's son? The one who-"

"The one who was stolen over twenty years ago, yes." Leo's matter of fact expression was often a joy to watch in action. It could also be damned annoying when trying to have a coherent conversation with the man. Leo waits another beat. "Have you ever seen a picture of To- of him?"

The hesitation is not lost on Sam, who feels a sinking feeling dropping through his chest. How many years had Leo and the Governor been friends for again?

Sure enough, Leo was carefully fishing his wallet out of his suit pants' pocket, angling his body so they were both somewhat shielded from the room beyond. And why were they having this conversation behind the potted plant in the Campaign war room again.

"Because, when you're the kind of old family with more significant historical figures than money, running a presidential campaign gets rather expensive." Great, just what he needed, a mental Toby to add to his collection of inner voices.

Leo holds the picture as if it were made of spun glass, the sharpness and unblemished quality of the obviously decades old photograph sending Sam's heart right down into his shoes. He swallows, accepting the corner of the photograph being offered to him.

It's a small picture, obviously posed, probably for this exact purpose, of being cherished in a wallet. The little boy grinning up at him, wearing his best vest and a little bowtie of all things, is probably no older than two.

"Two and a half, To-he always was a small little guy. Took after Jed that way." Leo's voice is rough, his gaze firmly devoted to the long ago image and carefully avoiding meeting Sam's wide, liquid expression. "It's the last picture we have of him."

Which answered the length of friendship question, although Sam would have infinitely preferred to keep his heart intact and simply gone on not knowing the answer to why the older half of the Bartlett campaign seem unable to look him in the eye without appearing to be about to burst into tears.

Because Sam has never been vain, but even he is well aware that the particular shade of blue he is graced with is a somewhat unusual eye colour. And he has spent enough time staring at a certain cherished photograph of his own to know exactly where Tommy Bartlett got his eyes from. Add those to together, and you have Sam, a walking reminder of the Bartlets missing son. Wonderful.

"Leo…," Sam isn't quite sure how to word this, for all his god given gift for beautiful prose (shut up Toby), "I'm not him." It isn't a serious response, rather a self-evident one. Coincidences like that simply don't happen in real life. And Sam is unfortunately more than aware of exactly who is parents are, for all it's been almost a year since he spoke to either of them.

He tried to say it as gently as possible, but a look of deep pain still crossed Leo's face, as his fingers closed protectively back over the picture. "I know that Sam. We've spent decades looking high and low for this boy. And last time I checked, this isn't a lifetime movie." It's acerbic, but it's more Leo than the rest of this conversation has been, and Sam is beginning to feel like he can breath again.

"I just thought you deserved a bit of a heads up on why we've all been acting a little, well, odd around you. Just give us a little time to get used to the resemblance okay, we'll settle down eventually."

Mrs. Barltlet's sudden overprotectiveness mingled with standoffishness and the Governor's somewhat…abrasive attitude seem to suggest otherwise in Sam's opinion, as does this entire widely uncharacteristic and largely inappropriate interview behind the pot plant, but the part of his heart that is still in his shoes can't remotely begin to blame them, so Sam merely nods, to which Leo responds in kind, and they go their separate ways.

Sam is incredibly grateful Josh wasn't around to witness their exit from the corner, as he has no idea how he would even begin to explain all this to his best friend. Nor is he sure he would even want to try. For all the entire world knows about it, there is something about the Bartlets'-and Leo's-grief that strikes him as intensely private.

Looking back on that conversation in the years to come, Sam will never quite know whether to laugh or cry. At the time though, he merely settles back at his corner of the farthest most desk and gets busy taping away at that speech for Toby, trying desperately to get the image of hauntingly familiar blue eyes out of his head. He never quite succeeds.

00

"…my name is Josiah T. Bartlet, and I am the newly elected President of the United States!"

Watching their President Elect bound down the convention steps, backgrounded by the loudest cheers he's ever heard in his life, Sam feels as giddy as he had at eight years old, perched in front of a grainy television set, attempting to match this man's eye color with the limited selection offered by his ratty box of crayons.

This feeling is not helped by President Elect Bartlet thumping into Sam with a manic grin on his face, arms tossed up to ruffle Sam's hair, laughter booming through his frame, "We did it Samuel!"

Sam grins into the exuberant embrace, feeling duty bound to correct, "You did it Sir."

The arms tighten ever so briefly into a genuine embrace, pulling Sam down to brush the rebuttal against his ear. "We did it Sam, that's an order." And for a moment, the gesture conjures up a sense of déjà vu so strong and swift and inexplicable, Sam's breath catches.

When Bartlet pulls away a moment later, Sam somehow manages a genuine, soft, "Yes Sir," his voice warbling with more than just warmth and enthusiasm.

Jed Bartlet's eyes linger on his face for a moment longer at that, and for the first time in Sam's memory, there is nothing hidden or haunted behind that intent regard.

Sam bizarrely finds himself missing it.

And watching the Bartlets' embrace moments later, the girls squashed between their grinning parents, Dr. Bartlet's face bursting with pride, little Annie plastered against her grandfather's legs, Sam has to swallow down a mouthful of shameful longing.

Because what he told Leo, all those months ago, was the truth. He isn't Tommy Bartlet.

But this is one of many, many occasions when he wished to god he could be.


	4. Chapter 4

The phone shrills fiercely, apparently miffed at being covered by not one but three discarded memo briefings in as many minutes. Josh side-eyes the vaguely phone shaped ringing lump as he flicks his chopsticks idly through Donna's leftover Moo Shu pork.

Sam is years past grimacing at Josh's dubious lunch choices, his resolute typing failing to pause for his friend, his friend's somewhat distastefully fragrant lunch, or his friend's contemplation of his buried telephone.

"Sam?" More typing. "Sam?" The typing keeps up at a steady rhythm as a distracted "Yeah?" floats over to Josh.

"Are you going to answer that?" Sam carefully doesn't look at his best friend. The typing reaches a military grade staccato.

"Answer what?" Josh looks at Sam askance. The pile starts ringing again, somehow louder in both volume and urgency in the otherwise quiet office space.

Josh speaks with deliberately annoying slowness. "The phone, Sam. Are you going to answer the phone?" Sam is still typing.

"Nope." Josh blinks slowly, greyish pork hanging from one twirled utensil. "Can I ask why not?"

Sam spares Josh a glance, his eyes hooded and his face as wooden as his voice is casual, "Nope."

Josh blinks at Sam for a moment, then shrugs, "Okay." And with that, he digs his chopsticks back into his lunch, the only sounds in the office once again the slurps of Josh eating, counterpointed by the clacks of Sam typing.

The phone is still ringing when Josh leaves Sam's office an hour later.

00

The longest period Sam has ever gone without speaking to or hearing anything from his parents is exactly eight years. Sam considered it a blissful time. Since he passed the bar however, he's had sporadic but fairly regular communication with at least his father. Well, if the man calling and Sam never failing to answer can properly be called communicating.

Contact. There, that's far more apt a descriptor for the Seaborns' peculiar brand of dysfunction. Sam has fairly regular contact with his father. And while takes a left turn into truly vitriolic after he leaves Gage Whitney to join the Bartlet Campaign, the contact did not cease.

Until it does, quite abruptly, about six months into President Bartlet's first term.

Sam doesn't think anything of it at first. Doesn't think about it when the caustic streams of vitriol cease to assault his ears every second Saturday of the month with military precision. There have been far longer cessations in contact after all. And he certainly doesn't miss the proof that somewhere out there, he still has something resembling a parent in the universe who at least knows he's still breathing.

He definitely doesn't miss it. Or think anything of it. And he certainly doesn't worry.

And then his mother calls. Sam is at home at the time, the delightfully antiquated technology of the late 1990s meaning he actually picks up the call, unsuspecting and cheerful in his "S. Seaborn speaking." His father taught him to answer the phone like that. Although with significantly less cheer.

"Samuel, it's Norma here." She always calls herself that, never your mother, let alone mom. In bitter retrospect, that should have been a rather large clue right there.

Sam actually drops the phone. Not because he's startled exactly, although he is, flabbergasted even. No, he drops it because somehow, even then, even before she goes any further, something in his mother's tone twigs something in his brain, and somehow he just knows.

The phone is silent until Sam has replaced it on his ear. "Gerald has had a stroke. He's not expected to make it." A pause, in which Sam forgets how to so much as gasp for air. "He would expect you to come." Expect, not want. Still his parents then.

The thought chokes Sam back into the moment, long enough for him to stutter, "What hospital is he at?" into a receiver that is already ringing dully with an emotionless dial tone.

Sam replaces the receiver with infinite care, and continues dressing for work with mechanical efficiency.

00

Sam's father is something of a local celebrity in every republican establishment in California state. A cornerstone of the republican establishment, whose son happens to work in the rather democratic white house.

So Sam doesn't have long to wait before the first reporter starts ringing. He disconnects his home phone after the fourth ring, and waits for the inevitable bombardment at work.

He makes the mistake of answering the phone there, the first time it rings, in the vain hope that it might be something actually related to running the US government.

"Mr. Seaborn, Joe Turnover here from the California Herald. Do you have any comment on your father's condition? What do you think of the doctors at St. Joseph's Memorial?"

And that's how Sam finds out what hospital his father is at.

After that, Sam buries his phone in a few stray memos and promptly tries to forget it, and by extension his father, exists.

00

Mrs. Landingham keeps a tin of butterscotch shortbread in her bottom right desk drawer, the only one with a lock. She guards the tin fiercely. She catches Josh every time he tries to jimmy it open. Toby never gets so much as within a foot of the desk.

Sam has a more successful approach; looking sad when he wanders by her desk. It usually nets him at least two biscuits. He feels guilty about this blatant emotional manipulation until he catches the President standing in the rain outside the Oval office one day, tell-tale orange-brown crumbs ringing his mouth.

Four days into his phone avoidance plan, Sam doesn't have to fake the quietly devastated look in his eyes. Although by the time he's somehow found himself slumped beside the Resolute desk, a napkin containing roughly a dozen pieces of shortbread in one hand, and a steaming cup of camomile in the other, he is beginning to seriously worry about the state of security at the White House, if his hang dog expression is ever weaponized by any of the US's enemies.

President Bartlet wanders into the room around Sam's third cookie, crumbs carefully held in the bottom of the napkin. He doesn't so much as pause at the sight of Sam leaning his head back against his desk. Sam catches the flash of someone who looks suspiciously like Ron Butterfield as the door to the Oval Office swings shut once more, and there goes the worries about security.

The President's on casual Thursday wear, Notre Dame sweatshirt rumpled. Sam loves that sweatshirt. Seeing President Bartlet wear it always makes him feel oddly safe, reluctant as he is to ever dwell too deeply on that thought.

The man slumps casually down beside Sam, his head rolling towards his companion's. A newspaper is proffered.

Sam glances at it, and stops reading after the words Californian Republican and Stroke. There goes the theory the US government had cracked ESP.

He stares down at his lap for a moment, before snagging a piece of crumbling shortbread from his dwindling stack.

"Shortbread Sir?"

The President's gaze doesn't waver from Sam's, regarding him with wise, sad blue eyes.

"Why didn't you tell us your father was sick Sam?" Sam lets his arm slacken, cookie crumbling away to nothing beneath his clenched fingers.

He doesn't say, I only found out two weeks ago.

He doesn't say, The last time we were in the same room together, one of us ended up with two black eyes. I was fourteen at the time.

He doesn't say, I think my mother hates me.

He doesn't say, Because I'm scared. Because I don't know what to say. Because then it will be real, all of it.

He just says, "We don't communicate very well Sir. We never have." He wonders when communicate became a euphemism for…well, everything, bruises and up.

The President…actively considers that, if his characteristic head tilt, hair flop onto forehead motion is anything to judge by.

Sam considers Leo's opinion of Thomas Bartlet and swallows hard, crumbs sticking in his dry throat.

Consideration apparently done, conclusions drawn, President Bartlet fixes his baby blues back on Sam's. That's never not been an intimidating experience.

It's never not been a suffocatingly heartwarming one either.

"My father and I didn't communicate very well either." A flashed grin, self-deprecating of all blessed things. "Well, he communicated fine. I was just too damn stubborn to listen to him."

And the world was all the better for it, Sam knows to be true.

Sam holds the gaze for a moment longer, swallows passed the crumbs, and returns his eyes to the cookie shreds in his lap. "I wouldn't know the first thing to say to him Sir." It comes out small and lost. Sam suspects one isn't supposed to sound like that in the Oval Office.

He suspects you aren't supposed to eat cookies in the Oval Office either.

The President reaches across Sam to snag the last vaguely cookie shaped lump, bringing it to his mouth with aplomb. The man really did have the sweetest smile. Boyish, the tabloids called it. And for once, Sam is inclined to agree with them.

"My father hated it when we got crumbs on the carpet." A silver quick wink. "Drove him absolutely mad." With a deliberate chomp, the shortbread disappeared in a hail of crumb.

Sam can't quite stop the helpless grin that spreads across his face.

He suspects you're not supposed to grin in the Oval Office either. There's probably a protocol about it somewhere. He mentally reminds himself to ask a republican sometime.

A hand lands on his shoulder, a gentle squeeze to it.

Sam looks at his Commander in Chief with eyes liquid and sticky. His cheeks feel oddly tacky.

"Go see your father Sam." It sounds like the order it is, tempered by wisdom, forged by bitter experience, just as this man's orders always are. That's probably why people usually listen to him. The hand tightens, it's mate joining with Sam's other shoulder. "But don't do it for him," the President's voice roughens, his own eyes filling with moisture. "Do it for you."

He doesn't say, You don't have to forgive him. And Sam doesn't hear, don't you dare forgive him, not for that. Not for any of it.

They don't elaborate on complicated. They just sit there, shortbread crumbs scattered about them, not sharing silent tears in the Oval Office, not leaning back against the Resolute Desk in crumbled sweatshirts and suit jackets.

And Sam doesn't drop his head onto the President's shoulder, his forehead brushing the N in Notre, a quiet, "Thank you Sir," lost in the soft fabric.

And the President doesn't quietly nod Ron Butterfield out of the room, doesn't wrap an arm around his deputy speech writer, doesn't lean his head back against unforgiving wood, and doesn't wait there, until Sam is ready to move.

Because there are just some things you don't do in the Oval Office. And he's never checked, but Jed is sure hugging makes the top of the list.


End file.
